


Quietly Through The Trees

by watanuki_sama



Category: Common Law (TV)
Genre: Being Chased, Gen, Mentions of Slavery, canon character death, non-linear timeline, old gods AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21909874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watanuki_sama/pseuds/watanuki_sama
Summary: Travis and Wes aren't gods, not really. Not anymore.
Relationships: Travis Marks & Wes Mitchell
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	Quietly Through The Trees

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on FF.net under the penname 'EFAW' on 12.22.19.

_“The trouble with being a god is that you’ve got no one to pray to.”_  
_—Terry Pratchett, Small Gods_

\---

_There is a forest in the heart of Los Angeles._

\---

He runs, sandy packed earth hard beneath his bare feet. In his hand is a spear—a bow—nothing but a fistful of claws, the only weapons he ever truly needs. His prey races ahead, darting to and fro in terror, and he grins a toothy, fanged smile. When he laughs, it’s the wild cackle of a hyena; when he shouts, it’s the angry roar of a lion.

The distance between him and his prey closes. His heart pounds in his veins, his breath comes quick in his ears, and hefts his spear—raises his bow—unsheathes his claws—

Honking horns and squealing tires invade the dream(memory), and Travis ducks out of the way of the fender, slapping one hand on the hood to steady himself. Ignoring the driver’s angry shouting behind him, he puts on a burst of speed, eyes never leaving the tan jacket on the back of the man he’s chasing.

His weapons are a golden shield and a Beretta; his booted feet pound across asphalt and concrete.

But the sun shines high above his head, and his blood pounds in his veins, and he feels a feral grin cross his face as the thrill of the chase consumes him.

The man he’s chasing(hunting) ducks into an alley, and Travis skids after him, slowing as he realizes his prey has trapped himself. There’s nowhere to go.

He wants to laugh, wild and wicked, revel in a chase complete.

But he brings his gun up and says, “Richard Kirkland, you are under arrest. Hands behind your head.”

As the man does as he’s ordered, Travis lets out a slow breath, and the savannah fades from the edges of his mind.

\---

Los Angeles is a city lousy with gods. Thanks to its proximity to Hollywood, people—not humans, but people like _him_ , people who are so much more than human, but so much less than they’d been once upon a time—flock here to become stars, to get their moment to shine and be worshipped like they were in days of old. They’re willing to mold and shape themselves, cut away everything that matters to become what the people want, all to have a miniscule taste of what they once took without thinking.

They’re drowning, clutching any piece of driftwood that comes their way, and if it means stripping away everything that _matters_ , then that’s what they’ll do.

It’d be funny, really, if it weren’t so sad.

Travis watches them pass in the streets sometimes, shadows of their former selves, and he feels pity for them. He’s a shadow, too, nothing like what he once was, but he’s kept his heart. He still _remembers_ , and he sinks his claws in and hangs on tight. He hasn’t shaved pieces of himself off until he’s a sliver.

Someday, those stars will flicker and fade, and everything that makes those old gods more than human will become nothing more than whispers creeping through alleys, reminiscing about the days they were loved to the rats and stray cats and alley dogs.

They’re all fallen idols, in their own way.

At least when Travis goes, he’ll go the way he lived.

\---

(Sometimes, as he’s walking through the precinct, he’ll smell—something, something old and dark that makes his hackles rise, that tickles the deepest corners of his brain and calls to him.

He can’t describe it if he tried. He just knows how it makes him feel.

It makes him want to run.)

\---

“Do you ever think about going back to the way it was before?” he asks one night when they’re alone in the bullpen. Wes is hunched over his desk, glaring at his computer as though it offends him; Travis leans back in his chair and spins his pen in his hand, staring at his partner and the blue glow that throws all the sharp edges of his face in stark relief.

“I left law for a reason, Travis,” Wes says sharply, annoyed at being pulled from his thoughts, annoyed at being distracted. Wes is always annoyed.

“I don’t mean before you were a cop.” Travis spins his pen, remembering the heft of a spear in his hand, the sharp weight of a dagger ready to throw. “I mean _before_. Do you ever get the urge to just fuck off to a national park and go back to being a tree?”

The sharp, staccato clicking of keys stops; Wes continues to stare intently at the computer screen. “Not really,” he says, voice flat and devoid of anything but annoyance. Annoyed, annoyed, Wes is always annoyed.

“You sure?”

“Very sure. You’d just go get yourself killed if I wasn’t watching your back.”

“Right.” Always annoyed, and Travis thinks he knows why, thinks it’s because Wes is like him, too much substance shoved and squeezed into a tiny, human package, straining at the seams. But Travis has his outlets, and his job is another way of hunting anyway, so he’s as close as he ever could be to what he was; Wes has his garden, but that’s not the same.

“Why’d you become a cop, Wes?” he asks, a question he’s never really thought about before. Travis was drawn to this job because of who and what he is. Wes—Wes is nature and plants and green things growing; not much of that in the heart of the city, chasing down gun runners and drug dealers. “Why not a botanist or a farmer or something?”

“Because people would walk through the woods and need ways to feel safe, and a concrete jungle is just another kind of forest.” The answer is cryptic as always, when it comes down to Wes’s true self. It’s like prying teeth.

Slowly, Wes’s fingers start moving, keys clicking as he types, and Travis knows this part of the conversation is over. He can push and prod and try to get more answers, but Wes won’t give anything more. He knows the signs.

Then Wes surprises him and says, “And I wasn’t a _tree,”_ and his voice is sharp and annoyed and more than a little indignant.

“Sure, babe, I believe you,” he says, and spins his pen. “But believe me when I say I think you’d make a beautiful spruce.”

Wes throws a paperclip at his head, and Travis laughs.

\---

_There is a forest in the heart of Los Angeles._

_It spawns from cracked asphalt and dusty soil, an old growth forest looming among the glittering glass and steel towers of the city. Roots twist through the streets, passing through concrete and tar with no damage done; branches protrude through windows, leaving shade but nothing else behind. For all that it is an illusionary forest, it is still very real._

_It is a memory of a forest, of the trees that once towered before people came and carved their way into the ground. And in the shadows of these great trees, darting through underbrush and tangled, gnarled roots, he runs._

_He knows this is not right. There is nothing wrong with his body, he has checked—claws on fingers and toes, a mouth of fangs, the easy, leonine grace that flows through his veins. These are as it should be._

_But the rest is not right. This is not his home, not the way it should be. There are too many trees, too many shadows. Not enough grass and sun and heat. But he does not linger beyond the edge of the forest; he is safe here, in this dark thicket, he knows this instinctively. Out there—_

_He does not remember what is out there. His mind is clouded, feral, unfocused. It is hard to think._

_A sound cuts through the trees, a thin whine that is almost familiar. He slides through a shadow, creeps to the edge of the forest and peers out. There is something there, flashing red and blue lights. This, too, is almost familiar, as though he saw something once in a dream._

_Figures emerge from the black-and-white vehicle, stiff-legged and wary and defensive. He knows this posture, knows the sign of hunters on the hunt, and his teeth turn up in a grin. He is the greatest hunter; let them try to play his game._

_He makes to step out of the treeline, to roar his challenge and defeat the whelps, but the trees rustle a warning at his back and he pauses. There is a whisper of feeling, of recognition—the trees are not right, but they are familiar._

_It is safe here, in this imaginary forest. Out there—he does not remember what is out there._

_It is so hard to think._

_It is easier in the woods, where there is no need for thought, just instinct and passion and blood, and he slowly sinks into the safety of the shadows._

_There will be time for challenges and hunt later._

_For now, he runs, and the trees susurrate in his wake._

\---

Travis doesn’t remember where he’s from, not really. He knows he’s from Africa—but that’s all broad strokes, and Africa is a very big continent. The smaller details are a blur.

What he has are flashes. Not of specific people or specific places, but of moments.

—running, savannah grass tickling his ankles, the sky wide open overhead, a terrific thrill of freedom—

—circling a lioness, watching her eyes, her feet, matching her vicious snarl with one of his own—

—people, indistinct and fuzzy, thanking him for feeding them another season, another year, hands outstretched with the choicest meat as offering—

—perched high in the twisted branches of a baobab tree, watching the fiery red sun sink below the horizon—

—dancing in the rain, mud splashing up his legs, laughing, head tilted back—

—blood on his face, on his hands, meat in his mouth, and he throws his head back and crows the triumph of another successful hunt—

Flashes. Moments of memory that fill his throat with nostalgia for a place he’s never been, for a home he’s never had.

Is it really any wonder, then, that his current incarnation is a rootless foster kid?

\---

His first memory, the first real, true memory he has, is of a boat filled with fear and blood and chains. He is confused, in pain, disoriented because he does not know where he is but he knows he is not where he should be. He is wedged between others, two, four, dozens of other people, squashed tight by the scared and dying and dead.

Old gods traveled to America with their people. He is kidnapped with his.

He makes hundreds of trips across the seas in those stinking boats, and every time he diminishes a little more. With every stolen person, a part of him is left behind on the African shoes, stolen with every stolen body; with every trip, he forgets a little more, has one more memory erased, just as his people’s names and languages and beliefs are erased away.

(sometimes he wonders if there is another version of himself left in Africa, a twin that still remembers his home in full, shining color, not fragmented, broken pieces. somewhere, all his missing pieces might still be running through the grass with spear in hand.

maybe that part is the real god, and Travis is the shadow, running through the streets of America and trying to find himself so far away)

\---

This is how he reclaims himself:

He fights; from emancipation to desegregation, from the Civil War to civil rights, he fights and he dies a thousand times over, and then he gets back up and keeps fighting. With a snarl on his face and claws in his hands, he fights, dragging himself from the abyss, and with every victory—no matter how small—he reclaims another tiny piece of himself. Slowly, piece by broken piece, he rebuilds.

He gets angry; every injustice to his peoples strokes the fires hotter, makes the rage grow a little more. He does not remember which people are his, so he adopts every African in sight and claims them as his own. He is a lone hunter, but he has watched enough to know how to be a pack hunter—understands that that which is _his_ is to be protected by him. It is not enough, not nearly enough—he is diminished, broken into too many pieces, and no one believes in the old gods anymore anyway. He has no power, not enough to _change_ anything. So instead, he sits with his people in diners and on busses, he marches and he fights and he supports them the only way he can, with one more body fighting for the cause. It is not enough, but it is all he can provide.

And he runs; through city alleys and rural back roads, on track fields and football fields. He runs to feel his muscles stretch and pull, to feel the wind on his face and the sun on his back. He runs to get the stench of fear from his nose, to remember the sheer _joy_ of the chase.

Sometimes, as he runs, feet pounding on the ground and head tilted to the sky, he can almost pretend he’s home.

\---

His second clear, true memory is running, crashing through trees and thick undergrowth, alongside two terrified black men. It’s night, the moon a bare sliver through the trees; the baying of the hounds are loud, echoing cries.

This is his first real hunt, not as the hunter, but as prey, racing for freedom alongside two escaped slaves. Terror spurs him on; not the fear of dying, but the fear of being caught.

He does not, in this first wild run, even remember his own name. That was stolen by the white men along with everything else. But he remembers clearly thinking, in one breathless moment as he leaps over a shallow creek, _It shouldn’t be like this._

The running is proper, is right. But not the terror, the gasping wheeze in his lungs of the fear thick in the back of his throat. Not the trees, wet and soggy, or the humid heat sticking to his skin.

It is not until later, when the fragments of memories of a life he once dreamed begin trickling back, that he understands.

But before that, there is just the feeling of wrongness, and fear.

\---

(sometimes he wonders if he’s really a god of the hunt after all. maybe he’s always been a god of the hunted, that last dying hope before the men and their dogs chase him to the ground, someone dreaming of something bigger and better.

maybe he’s always been running in the wrong direction.)

\---

_Away from the edge of the woods, where the people gather and clamor for answers in panic, there is less uncertainty, less confusion. It is still hard to think, hard to gather more than the idea of thoughts before they flit away, but it is less frantic._

_He slows from a run to an easy trot and then a brisk walk, trailing his hands across aged bark and through the gentle prickle of deep greenery. The flora responds, shuddering softly against his palm, caressing his shoulders and face as he walks, never constraining, never confining, merely unchecked affection._

_These woods are not right. He knows it with every semi-coherent memory he has, all the way down to his sun-baked bones. But they are familiar, curled precious and secure in a place deep in his chest, and with every beat of his heart he can feel a sense of peace and safety._

_He may not know these woods, but they are HIS in a way he cannot fully comprehend. That is enough._

_With a great sigh, he settles down, between two arching roots of a great tree. He will close his eyes, just for a moment, in these woods that scream of safety, and then he will resume the hunt. Maybe by the time he awakes, he will remember what he is hunting for._

_He has barely settled his head when something sharp jabs his thigh, making him sit upright with a yelp. One of the vines that rested so softly against his leg has grown thorns, wicked things an inch long._

_He growls a challenge at the trees, shifts position, and settles back._

_Two more sharp bursts of pain, in his back and his calf, and he leaps up, snarling._

_The trees rattle at him, wordless denial. He echoes back his own confusion and gets more of the same in response, again and again until he understands._

_He cannot rest. Safe as he feels, the danger—unseen and unknown as it is—has not passed. He must stay awake, he must guard against a threat he does not understand._

_Well. Alright then._

_He scrapes his claws across the tree, just enough to leave the lightest of gouges in the bark, just enough to show his displeasure for the thorns._

_Then he takes off, a gentle lope that could carry him for miles and miles if needed._

_He will not go that far. He will stay within the shadows of the trees, and he will guard against any threat, and he will keep this vibrant green place safe._

_His bones cry out that this is wrong, but his heart beats with a fervent exclamation that this is the rightest thing he’s ever done in his entire existence, and he revels in the song of his blood as he runs._

\---

“So what are you?” he asks, chin propped on his hand. “Some kind of forest spirit or something?”

“Something like that,” Wes says coyly. Then he frowns and flicks a paperclip at Travis’s head. “Though ‘spirit’ is a little rude. And more than a little demeaning.”

Travis laughs and teases Wes about his inferiority complex for a while, and the thought of _what_ , exactly, Wes is slips from his mind.

\---

It’s springtime, and Captain Sutton his filled the office with flowers, a profusion of daisies and tulips and who-knows what else on every desk.

(Wes probably knows. Wes could no doubt name every flower species by its proper, Latin name if asked. Travis doesn’t ask.)

It’s a slow day, a lazy, paperwork day, and Travis idly plucks a daisy from the plastic vase on his desk, spinning it in his fingers. “I’m not sure I’m loving the captain’s whole therapy-new-me thing.”

“I like it,” Wes says, voice calm and relaxed. “We should have flowers around more often.”

There’s something serene about Wes’s face, a peace that Travis isn’t sure he’s ever seen before. It looks good on him—he’s been way too stiff and tense since he and Alex split.

Maybe Travis should look into getting a few plants around the office, permanent color to liven up the place.

“Hey.” He leans over, tucks the daisy behind Wes’s ear. Then he chortles. “Now you look just like one of those fairy tale village girls who wanders into the woods and gets lost forever.”

Travis doesn’t know exactly what’s so funny, but Wes throws his head back and laughs, bright and unrestrained, and Travis will remember for a long, long time the way every face in the room turns towards him—not just the people, but the flowers, too, turning to Wes like he’s the sun and they’re basking in his warmth.

\---

Stakeouts are the most boring things in the history of the world. Oh, he understands the purpose, understands how to patiently wait for prey to emerge from their den so he can pounce. He knows the _reasoning_ behind stakeouts. That doesn’t make them any less boring.

“I’m bored, Wes,” he whines, propping his foot on the dash. “How long are we gonna have to be here?”

“Until something happens, or till the end of our shift,” Wes replies. “Get your foot off my dash. Did you bring a book like I told you?” Wes doesn’t have a book. Wes has an entire year’s worth of _Better Homes & Gardens_ magazines, and he’s carefully reading each article like it has the secrets of the universe inside instead of 10 Tips To Grow Bigger Petunias.

Fucking nerd.

“I did not bring a book,” Travis declares staunchly. It’s not that he has anything against reading in general, he just doesn’t tend to do it as one of his hobbies. Too much sitting still, not enough _doing_.

“You can borrow one of my magazines if you like.”

“I would literally rather chew my foot off.”

“I’ll rip it off if you don’t get it off my dash,” Wes says pleasantly. Travis quickly drops his foot.

Another five minutes passes without only a little bit of whining on Travis’s part (and by a little, he means a lot). Finally, he throws up his hands, hitting the roof in the process, and says, “I’m over this, I can’t do it. Wake me when something happens.”

He’s fumbling with the lever to lower his seat, so it takes him a second the realize Wes’s silence has changed from bored apathy to something surprised. When he glances up, he sees Wes staring at him, undisguised shock on his face.

“What are you doing?” Wes asks, and the car suddenly smells overwhelmingly _green_ , the scent rising with Wes’s confusion.

“Taking a nap,” Travis replies easily, settling back. He offers Wes a smile. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Right before he closes his eyes, he sees Wes’s pleased amazement, and his partner’s leafy green scent transforms into something softer, full of a quiet kind of joy.

\---

(For all that he has run with lions and skulked with hyenas, he has never been part of a pride, never had a pack of his own. He is a lone hunter, striding across the savannah and city streets with only his shadow for company.

He’s never had anyone to watch his back while he sleeps, so he’s never slept except safe in his own den. Better that way— _safer_ that way.

But times marches ever on, and things changes, even for beings like him. He hasn’t run alone for a long, long time.

Wes has become part of his pack, whether he knows it or not, and Travis trusts him to watch his back.

Travis can _sleep_ around him, and that is a very important thing. And Wes may be more tree than man, but he understands enough of the animal to know what Travis is silently offering.

So he puts of a token protest whenever Travis declares that he’s going to take a nap, but he never stops looking so damn _pleased_.)

\---

In terms of concrete, linear existence, if going by his first true memory, Travis is young, so young. Wes carries the accumulation of eons in his eyes like a shroud, and sometimes when he’s tired the weight of tens of centuries presses on the air around him and their coworkers, normal humans that they are, take a few steps back.

In comparison, Travis has only a few centuries under his belt, a handful of years to call his own. Still longer than anything the regular humans bear, but less pressing, less cloying for them.

The echo of his memories goes back so much farther, to when man was just a primitive thing hiding in caves from thunder and trying to figure out how this whole _fire_ thing really worked.

On his good days, he claims them all as his own and boasts of millennia of knowledge and experience, and he carries the confidence of this age that makes him walk with a strut and proclaim without words, _I am the Alpha here, I am the best, you cannot defeat me._ On those days, he feels Wes’s equal—it is dreadfully important for him to be Wes’s equal, for them to share the same spot in this wordless little pack he’s created of the two of them.

On his bad days, he bemoans how short his life has been and how _unfair_ it is that he’s already dying when he’s barely been born, because nobody _believes_ the way they used to and it _hurts_ , to feel this awful mortality creeping into his muscles and dragging him down. On those days, Wes listens as he cries over his beer, but he is nothing more than a quiet ear and a steady presence; trees do not live forever, but they are immortal compared to the quicksilver lives of animals. And man is still just an animal.

But good or bad, Wes is _there_ , and that means something. Something _important_ , something Travis still doesn’t have the proper words to quantify it with. Words are so messy and inelegant, so _human_ , and Travis may wear the face of a human but he is _not_ , and neither is Wes.

He can’t put it into words, and Wes never tries, so he leaves it as it is and soaks up Wes’s presence like a sponge.

It’s important, and precious, and that’s all that matters.

\---

Wes has his bad days, too, the days when his skin is stretched too tight and he moves too stiffly, when he slathers on too much Purell to hide the way his leafy green scent carries the stinking undertone of rotting vegetation. He gets still and quiet, then, wraps himself in bark he no longer wears and gets snappy when people actually dare to remind him that he’s not a giant redwood, or whatever the hell he used to be before humanity created gods and gave him _consciousness_.

“I’m not _safe,”_ he always snaps on those days, bristly and prickly and full of thorns. “People get lost in the woods _all the time_ and they’re _never found again.”_

“I know,” is all Travis says, and he doesn’t flinch when Wes lashes out because Wes only ever uses his words, and words—words are human things, and Travis is so much more.

He cannot be the same stolid presence for Wes that Wes is for him, he does not carry that same gravity of centuries, but he can be patient. Those are the days when it is easy, to wait in stillness, and he doesn’t even have to pretend he’s waiting for prey to run by.

When Wes is hurting, it’s easy to be quiet and still and _there_. He can be there. So many things are difficult, but that’s not one of them at all.

\---

(sometimes he dreams he’s running on four legs, running and running through an endless forest. and when he gets tired, he curls up at the base of a tree, tucked between the curving roots, and the leaves whisper a lullaby and he falls asleep, safe.)

\---

_He returns to the edge of the woods, where the danger is strongest, and he watches. He watches the crowd, lurks in the shadows of the branches and watches, waiting for—something, he doesn’t know what yet, but he’s sure he’ll know it when he sees it._

_And then he does. A figure, gliding through the crowds, ethereal and wonderful and terrible, moving with a foreign grace that does not belong with these skittering, frantic humans._

_He watches the figure approach, sees her glide through the barricades like they aren’t there, and a tickle of a dream of a memory nudges the back of his mind. Her kind are good at that, he thinks, of moving unnoticed and unseen, regal and elegant as her faerie kin so many generations past._

_Her kind._

_h e r_

_MacFarland._

_An Angelicized version of the Celtic name MacPharlain, meaning ‘son of Parlan’. He’d wondered, in more coherent times, who Parlan was. Was he just a simple farmer, or was he something wilder and fey, to match the poison honey in her veins?_

_When she stops at the edge of the woods and looks upon the shadows, her eyes gleam with silver._

_This forest is old, and it brings out old, old memories buried deep in blood and bone and flesh._

_“Travis,” she calls, and her voice pierces the darkness, echoes in the far corners between the trees. Travis. The word is strange, and familiar._

_He shifts, creeping closer to the edge of the woods._

_“Travis,” she calls again, and he inches forward like he is being pulled, irresistible as the moon._

_“Travis,” she says once more, one last time, and—there is power in names, and in threes. Combined, it is enough to shake the fog from his mind, to rise to his feet and emerge from the woods on two legs instead of four._

_He stops at the edge, clothed in the shadows of leaves. “Alex,” he says, and it’s an effort, as though he’s forgotten how to speak._

_She smiles, and doesn’t say his name again, for that would break the spell of threes. “It’s good to see you,” she says instead, and for an instant he can see her as she is, blue eyes and gentle smile, before memories and dreams wreath her once more._

_He looks down at himself, hands with curving, gleaming talons and arms speckled like a cheetah. This form is familiar, hyena spots and a lion’s mane, like slipping into an old jacket he found in the back of his closet. But there’s something wrong, something… the sun isn’t hot enough, and there shouldn’t be so many trees…_

_It is so hard to think, this close to the woods, but he doesn’t dare leave._

_“This isn’t…right,” he says slowly, tasting the shape of fangs in his mouth. That, too, is familiar, but somehow wrong._

_“No,” she agrees, gentle in a face so sharp, pointed ears and razor cheekbones. Or—no, that’s the glimmer of illusion, raindrops and heat mirages; her kind are so good at that._

_“This isn’t right,” she says, “and it’s time to come home.”_

_That makes his head come up, makes him recoil deeper into the shadows. “No,” he snarls, fierce as a lion. “Not without him.”_

_She stares at him with fathomless eyes as endless as a moonless night. “I never said for you to return without him. Bring him with you.”_

_He looks into the woods, into the consuming darkness between the trees. He doesn’t dare leave, but to venture further inside seems a folly. He is a creature of the savannah, flat and sparse; this is dense and shadowed, a maze of leaves and bark._

_“How?” he asks, or maybe he just thinks it, the question writ on his face._

_She laughs, an eerie, wild thing that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “How? You are a hunter. So go.”_

_She lifts one elegant hand, pointing into the heart of the darkness._

_“Hunt.”_

_He plunges into the woods._

\---

“Travis!” Alex exclaims, pulling the door open wide with a smile. She holds out her arms, drawing him into a quick, gentle hug, and he closes his eyes and ignores the scent of her poisoned honey blood.

“I’m glad to see you’re alright,” she says as she pulls back. “Wes went to rest almost as soon as he got home. He said you were fine, but still. It’s good to see it.”

“Naw, I’m good. Wes took the brunt of it.” He smiles at her, holds the cute little potted plant he picked up at the grocery store. “I brought him a gift. I can leave it, though, if he’s resting.”

“No, no, come in,” she chides, drawing him through the house by the hand. “You’re his partner, I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”

She maneuvers him through the kitchen, past the stairs, but before he can ask she’s guiding him through the back door and onto the porch, and then Travis doesn’t need an explanation at all.

Wes’s backyard has always been a jungle, trees and bushes everywhere, flowers blooming in every open spot. It’s a cultivated riot of greenery, and Travis had always wondered how Wes found the time to maintain it, to keep everything healthy and vibrant.

He’s not sure he needs to wonder that anymore.

Wes is curled at the base of one of the trees, like he doesn’t care one whit about the grass or dirt getting on his suit. One hand is tucked under his head, arm gently wrapped in the leafy fronds of some ferny plant; the other is tucked wrist-deep in the soil between the tree roots. Other plants caress him, tendrils and vines snaking up his pants, sliding down his collar.

When they’d left the hospital this afternoon, Wes had looked beaten and exhausted, moving like an old man, face pale from the effort of staying upright. Now, though, now he looks—

…green, actually. Like, there is a legitimately green tinge to his cheeks, chlorophyll dancing under his skin, and if Wes were awake Travis would absolutely make a joke about Vulcans.

“He looks better,” he says after a long, long minute. 

And he does. Despite the green hue—or maybe because of it—Wes doesn’t look nearly as wan, and his face is the relaxed smoothness of true sleep, not merely passing out from exhaustion. He looks like he could jump up any moment now, good as new.

There are still bruises on his face, but aside from that, Wes is simply sleeping.

“He gives the plants strength,” Alex says, voice soft and fond. “And when he needs it, the plants return it to him.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You’re his partner,” she says simply. Then she smiles at him, something fey around her eyes, and shrugs. “And you’re special, too. You understand.”

He can’t say anything to that.

Still smiling, Alex looks back at her husband. “He’ll love the potted plant.”

\---

The first time he meets Alex, Travis grips her hand and keeps a polite, practiced smile on his face and does his very best not to grimace in disgust. There is something wrong with her, a scent that clings to her skin and blood, sickly sweet like poisoned honey, drizzled over meat used for bait.

He thinks he hides his reaction, but he’s not sure, not when she gives him a long, knowing look before she lets go of his hand. He does better the next time they meet, and better still after that. She’s his partner’s wife, he makes it a point to get along with her, to be friendly. So long as he’s not smelling her scent, she’s really quite fun to be around.

Then one night, Wes runs to the grocery store in the middle of prepping dinner because they’re out of cream, no he _cannot_ use _milk_ that would be an _insult_ to the _recipe_ , and just like that, Travis is left alone with Alex.

He’s made it a point not to be alone with Alex.

“So…” he says, searching for a conversation starter.

She takes a sip of her wine. “You don’t like me.”

“That—that’s not…” He rubs his nose. Now that Wes has left, his pervasive, clean leafy scent is gone, leaving behind poisoned honey, trying to lure him closer. “I like _you_.”

“But you don’t like something about me.” She leans closer, studying him, like she can parse out his secrets. “What part?”

He leans back, but that doesn’t make her deadly scent go away. “It’s nothing. Really.”

She rolls her eyes, and for just a moment, he thinks he sees a flash of silver cross that pretty blue. “Travis. Let’s just be honest here. Wes isn’t human. Neither are you. But clearly you’re not the same type of non-human, because he’s _never_ been bothered by me. So please, tell me what it is. Maybe I can do something about it.”

“I doubt it,” he says before he can think about it. “It’s in your blood.”

“Ah.” She sits back, satisfaction radiating from every pore. There’s a silvery gleam in her eye, and something wild and smug in the corner of her mouth. “I knew there was something.”

Well, that’s just rude. Travis feels a little cornered.

“Are you human?” he asks sharply, because he’s always been one to attack when threatened. There’s no visible threat here, not yet, but he can’t decide if he can trust her until he knows what he’s facing.

“Yes,” Alex answers. At his skepticism, she amends, “Mostly. My great-great-whatever grandfather was a faerie. Or so the family stories say. My blood is thin.”

Not thin enough, or maybe Travis is just sensitive. She says Wes doesn’t have any problem with her.

“Fae,” he muses. “Aren’t they all in Europe and Ireland and stuff?”

“Says an African diety of the hunt,” she retorts, amused, and Travis tips his glass in a point to her.

The next time they meet, she’s wearing perfume, something light and sweet and citrusy. It doesn’t completely block out the toxic scent of her blood, but it mutes it somewhat. Travis appreciates the effort.

\---

Wes is at the end of the bar, half-hidden in the draping leaves of a potted ficus. Travis sidles to the empty stool beside him and says, “Hey. Paekman told me about you and Alex.”

“Fuck off,” Wes says, the harsh rasp of a man who’s had too much alcohol in one sitting.

“You want any company?”

“No.”

Travis sits. Wes scowls sourly at his glass, idly swirling the amber liquid. Travis has never been one for sitting silently unless he’s on a hunt, but he holds his tongue now, waits. Patience is a game he knows.

Abruptly, Wes tosses the remains of his drink back, slams the tumbler on the bar, and waves for another. The bartender brings it over with the quiet reluctance of a man who is going to have to cut his customer off soon and doesn’t look forward to the task.

“Look on the bright side,” Wes snaps venomously. “Now you won’t have to be around someone you hate.”

Travis shifts uncomfortably. “Thought we were talkin’ ‘bout Alex, not you,” he jokes, but the words fall flat and Wes’s scowl deepens. Travis sighs. “I don’t hate Alex. I quite like her. I wish it had worked out between you.”

“You don’t like her.”

“I do. I adore Alex. Not so keen on her fae blood, but that’s not something she can help, any more than you can help the way that ficus is feeling you up.”

Wes doesn’t say anything, staring down at his drink as though the glass or the scotch inside will have all the answers in the universe. Travis waves the bartender off and pulls a bowl of bar nuts in front of him. Ooh, cashews, he loves those!

“It’s a fig tree,” Wes mutters eventually.

“Either way, what it’s doing to you is almost certainly R-rated.”

Wes flips him the bird.

“I thought you hated her,” he says after another long silence, voice small. “I thought you’d be happy we split.”

“Never.” In the beginning, maybe, but not now, not after so many years of getting to know Alex for _Alex_ and not just what her blood smelled like.

It took him a while, but he figured it out. The fae, they always had a special relationship with nature—humans may be mere playthings to them, but they always respected and loved the earth. No wonder Wes felt so comfortable around Alex. 

Whereas Travis was born of lions and cheetahs and hyenas, and of that most fearsome hunter of all, _man_. And the faerie had always been hunters of their own, but their prey had been humans. 

He didn’t like her because a part of her was trying to lure him in, trying to coax the part of _him_ that was born from humans and entrap him. He didn’t like it when he was the prey.

But that had nothing to do with _Alex_. No, he liked Alex a whole lot.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” he says quietly, picking at the bar nuts.

Wes sniffles, and the fig tree wraps a dark green leaf around his arm, curling close. “I miss her,” he says, and his voice is so _small_ , smaller than Travis has ever heard Wes sound.

“I know,” he murmurs, because what else is there to say?

And for the whole of the night, he sits there, and when Wes finally cries, he offers his shoulder and doesn’t even complain about the tears on his nice leather jacket.

\---

_He runs, deeper and deeper into the woods; above him, the light gets thinner, fighting harder to seep through the leaves. The undergrowth rises up, tangling his feet, and he is spry and lithe and lethal but there is a calculated attack to the vines and bushes._

_Wes does not want him to go any deeper. Wes wants him to stay on at the edge._

_Travis plunges on._

_He needs to get to the heart of the woods. Wes is in the heart, Wes IS the heart—Travis knows this as surely as he knows his own body, molded from dirt and clay and baked under the hot African sun. If he can get to the heart of the wood, the very center of all things here, he’ll find Wes. He can save Wes._

_If he can get there._

_Wes isn’t making it easy._

_There are no scents to trail, no footprints to follow, no sounds to track. Wes is the wood and the wood is Wes and all the senses he uses to hunt are useless here._

_And every time he thinks he might be getting close, the trail twists, the trees bend, the shadows leap and shift and spiral around him. He is too close, or too far; he is a stranger in a strange place, the village girl lost in the woods with no signposts to guide her home._

_He is lost, and time is running out. He hears it in the creak of branches, the rustle of leaves, the slow steady thrum of the song of the trees. If he does not get to where Wes is, then Wes will be no more._

_All that will remain are the trees._

_“Wes,” he murmurs, a sacrilegious break in the silence of the forest. “I need a little help here.”_

_The trees do not answer in anything but angry whispers, demanding he turn around, go back. He closes his eyes, presses his forehead against the nearest trunk._

_It is so hard to think, to focus. He does his best, guiding his mind to one prevailing thought: Wes. Wes. Wes._

_His prey. His pack. His partner._

_He cannot leave the forest without him._

_“Please.”_

_There is another rustle of foliage, smaller, closer to the ground. When Travis opens his eyes, he finds himself staring down into a red-orange face, triangular ears and pointed nose. The fox is perfect—fur the color of autumn leaves, belly white as snow, paws and ears tipped in ashes and soot._

_The fox grins, tongue lolling, and there is an all-too familiar spark in those chocolately eyes._

_“Paekman…?”_

_With only the smallest susurrus, the fox plunges into the bushes._

_Travis doesn’t hesitate a second to follow._

\---

His second day on the job, he’s walking through to lobby when he feels a tingle on the back of his neck, a breath of laughter in his ear. He whips around, hand dropping to his hip in a move that has not quite become familiar, not yet, and scans the crowd.

There is no one there.

“You alright?” the officer manning the metal detector asks, and Travis shakes his head and smiles.

“Fine,” he says, and heads inside.

It happens four more times, that feeling of being watched, of being quietly laughed at. There is no one there. There is never anyone there. 

There is someone there. Travis may not be able to see them, but he is a predator at heart; he knows the patience of waiting, of lying still and silent so the prey can’t see him coming, of hiding in the shadows waiting for the perfect time to strike. There is someone watching him, waiting, and when they attack, Travis will be prepared.

\---

He’s in the cafeteria when it happens again, that subtle tingle that makes the hairs on the back of his neck go up, a gentle hint of laughter whisping past his ear. Travis shifts his fingers and suddenly a fork is no longer an eating utensil but a weapon, ready to plunge into the flesh of whatever is coming for him.

A tray thunks down on the other side of the table, and a bright, cheery voice says, “Hi.”

He looks up.

The man is Asian—Korean? Chinese? Travis can’t tell—and about Travis’s height if he were standing, maybe a little shorter. Dark hair, medium build, and a polite, friendly smile—but his eyes are dancing, twinkling with laughter at a joke the world doesn’t yet know it’s told.

“I’m David Paek,” the man says, sitting easily and calmly on the other side of the table. “But you can call me Paekman, everyone does.”

Travis doesn’t relax his hand form his fork (his spear, his blade, his weapon). “It’s you. You’re the one who’s been watching me.”

“Yup!” Paek says brightly, picking up his own fork, and Travis tenses for a fight, but all the other man does is scoop a big bite of macaroni salad. “Saw you the first day. Thought you were interesting. And I was right!” He grins, foxy delight in his teeth. “Wanna be friends?”

Slowly, Travis sets down his fork. “Trickster.”

There are tricksters in every mythology and pantheon, the mischief makers, the story tellers, the liars. There are common forms around the world—crow, fox, coyote—but at their basic shape, tricksters are amorphous, malleable, becoming whatever the story needs. They are the first shapechangers, the archetype.

Travis can change certain things about his form: his hair, the color of his eyes, the build of his muscles. But there are some things he’ll never be able to strip away. He was born on the African planes, baked under the hot sun and milked on sweet savannah water and blood—he will always be African where it counts, and the day he is not is the day he is no longer himself.

But tricksters can be anything and anyone, and that’s what makes them so dangerous.

“Yup!” Paek chirps, an echo of a crow’s delighted squawk in the word. “And you’re a hunter of some sort, right? You carry heat around you. Desert?”

“Savannah.” 

“Nice! Have you ever seen a giraffe? I’ve only ever seen them in the zoo, it’s not the same. Who came up with the idea of a ten-foot long neck on an animal?” And he throws his head back and laughs at his own joke and his voice rings with the bark of the coyote, the yip of the fox, the bray of the crow.

Despite himself, Travis smiles.

\---

“Yo, Wes! Come ‘ere! There’s someone I want you to meet!”

It is the smell Travis notices first, a deep, musky odor, death and growth and the gentle, sweet smell of green things. Then the shadows come, rolling ahead of the footsteps, long and dark, stretching from floor to ceiling and beyond, reaching up towards the sky.

Travis can feel his hackles rise, feel his lips pull back from his teeth in a feral, savage grin. He has smelled this before, this dark, pervasive scent, of trees and nightmares and loneliness, but not like this, not this strong, seeping into his bones and pulling out every silent, ancient thing he’s tried to hide in a cloak of civility.

He wants to run. He wants to plunge into the undergrowth around him and _run_ , and run and run and lose himself in the unfamiliar trees.

A hand grips his shoulder, steadying him, calling him back to this form, this body (this fragile, tiny thing that cannot always contain what he is). Paekman smiles, calm and strong, a twinkle in his eye, and calls over his shoulder, “Wes, tone it down a notch, dude.”

“Oh,” a voice says, brighter than Travis expected—he’d expected something deep and sonorous, to match the shadows looming above his head. But this is sharp and light, a silver dagger of a voice, sounding more than a little sheepish. “Sorry.”

The shadows pull back, the scent of old growth recedes, and Travis is back in the gun range, feet grounded firmly on concrete and tile. He takes a breath, oil and hot metal thick on his tongue, and he can taste, ever so faintly, the remnants of the forest, but it is a quick whiff, a passing memory of vegetation and darkness. He has passed this scent in the hall before.

He turns.

Wes is unassuming, reedy and pale, bound up in a suit like the fabric will contain him. But his eyes are dark and old, so old, and when Travis looks deep enough he can see the flicker of sunlight through leaves. He wonders what Wes sees in his eyes.

“Well, go ahead, boys.” Paekman leans against the partition, watching with laughter in his gaze. “Shake hands.”

Travis grins a smile that has too many teeth and holds out his hand. Slowly, Wes meets him.

“What’s the line from that movie?” Paekman says, mirth ringing in his voice. “ ‘This is gonna be the beginning of a beautiful friendship’.”

\---

(Later, much, much later, Travis will think back on that first meeting and wonder how he could have ever thought Wes was something as simple as a _forest spirit_.)

\---

He stands in a parking lot staring at the body of his friend, blood pooling on the asphalt, and he wants to scream. Wants to cry out to the heavens for revenge, wants to prowl the city streets and hunt down the bastards that did this and _tear them apart_.

Wes stands at his side, and around his feet the shadows loom a little bit darker, a little bit longer. The other officers—the normal, the _human_ —give them berth without realizing they’re doing it. Right now, Travis is grateful for the respite.

“We did this,” Wes says, voice hollow as wind whistling through a tree trunk, fallen and rotten through. “We put him there.”

Travis swallows hard, looks down at Paekman, surrounded by red tape and flashing lights, and his fingernails cut through his palms.

They are not human. They are _more_ , they are nature personified, forest and hunt and tricky little lies. They carry the weight of centuries on their backs, woven into their skins and filling their bones with legends and myths and offerings to dead gods.

They are also so _very_ human. Forgotten, faded, no longer what they once were. They wear human faces, eat human food, walk through the day doing human jobs. The old ways are gone; no one worships him the way they used to, offers him the first best bite of their kill as thanks for a hunt gone well. 

In so many ways, he is the predator of the savannah, the guiding hand of every thrown spear, the relentless force that keeps going long after the prey has grown weary.

In so many more ways, he is just Travis Marks, and the body before him was just another human. A _friend_.

“We did this,” Travis echoes, fists squeezing tighter. “We got Paekman killed.”

Drops fall from his broken palms, splashing against the cracked asphalt, and Travis swears on blood, his blood and Paekman’s, that they’ll make this right. He and Wes will put the ones who did this away.

He thought their kind could never die; he’s been going so long, endless years passing in a haze, and he’d assumed that was how it would always been until he faded into obscurity, until no one remembered the shape of his voice or the touch of his soul. Until the day he woke up fully human, and never remembered he’d been anything more. _Then_ he would die. But not before.

Apparently, he was wrong.

\---

_He follows the fox on a winding, circuitous path, seeing the animal in glimpses. A flash of fur here, a flick of an ear there. Occasionally, when he stumbles over vines and brush that continue to thwart him, there will be vulpine laughter, ringing through the branches, and Travis will grit his teeth and pull himself upright._

_He knows this game. His prey is out there, and the chase will lead him right to it. This time, his prey and the one leading him are not the same, but that is mere formality. The shape of the game is all that matters._

_Travis has spent a very, very long time playing this game._

_He rounds a tree bigger than him by half and sees the fox, sitting primly beside a wall of dangling vines. The fox grins, toothy and bright, and plunges into the depths. Travis follows._

_—and steps into silence. Even the trees are silent here, leaves moving but making no whispers. He is standing in the heart of the woods, and all is still._

_It is easier to think here, to push down the old, ancient memories and remember more recent ones. Captain Sutton, the precinct, LA, Paekman, Wes, Wes, Wes—_

_Alex’s spell of three is still holding, but it is more than that. All of Wes’s energy is at the edge of the woods, keeping the rest of the world out, and Travis is standing in its heart._

_The floor of the clearing is a bed of thorns, with one pale figure stretched supine in the center. Travis steps forward, ignoring the barbs that dig into his feet, leaving a trail of red, red footprints behind him._

_He, better than most, understands that the first offerings were made of blood. He does not begrudge the wood this tribute._

_He kneels beside the pale body, still and cold and empty. Crimson flowers bloom from his chest, petals falling from his mouth, and his gaze is blank, staring sightlessly into a sky of woven leaves._

_Wes has only ever been a shell for the woods inside him, the woods around them, but still—this shape is familiar and comforting, and besides, Travis would feel very silly indeed trying to have a meaningful conversation with a bunch of trees._

_“Wes,” he says softly, brushing a scarlet petal off his partner’s cheek. “It’s time to go.”_

_**NO,** the trees shout without words. Travis has never learned the language of plants, but he is fluent in the language of Wes, and he understands._

_“Yes. It’s time to go home.”_

_**NO,** the woods retort, branches trembling in an unfelt wind. **WE WILL TAKE THIS LAND. THEIR SACRIFICE WILL GIVE US ROOTS, AND WE WILL GROW, AND YOU CAN RUN.**_

_Travis understands this desire, to flee back into the old ways, when he was worshipped as a god and he never had to deal with anything more complicated than a challenging hunt. But the old ways are gone, and maybe Travis should have faded with them, maybe he and Wes and all like him should have, but they didn’t and Travis is going to make the best of it he can._

_“They will come and cut your branches and slaughter your roots,” he says bluntly, because sometimes the best way to be kind is to be as harsh as he can be. “They will destroy you and you will not be able to stop them. This is not your home anymore. The world has grown too large, and they worship different gods. The old ways will not return.”_

_**NATURE ALWAYS RETURNS.** _

_“But not yet. Not yet.” He leans in close, whispers into the ear of the still, pale form below him. “You are Wesley Mitchell. You are more than human. You are the most human there is. You are the woods and the plants and the dark shadows between trees; you are a friend and a cop and the best damn partner I’ve ever had. You are Wesley Mitchell. You are stubborn and moody and OCD and annoying as hell, and I wouldn’t have you any other way. You are Wesley Mitchell, and it is time to go home.”_

_The trees stop their silent dance. There is a charging energy in the air, a tense expectation on the knife-edge of possibility._

_The body below him blinks, takes a shallow, racking breath—_

\---

—and Travis is kneeling on cold asphalt, pressing his hands against the gunshot wound in Wes’s chest. “Come on, baby,” he exhorts, gritting his teeth and ignoring the way Wes thrashes beneath him. “Come on, just a little bit longer. Where are the damn paramedics?!”

The bystanders are blinking their way out of a dream, the officers frowning from the haze, and Travis wonders how the news will spin this. Natural gas leak, probably. But that’s not important. What’s important is keeping pressure on the wound and barking at people until they snap out of Wes’s mojo and start responding.

Minutes later, as he’s climbing in the back of the ambulance, he thinks he sees a face in the crowd. A familiar face, dark hair and twinkling eyes and a grinning, foxy smile.

Then the door slams shut, and Travis wonders if he was just imagining it after all.

\---

_Arboreal hallucination caused by natural gas leak_ , the news reports, which makes Wes grumble and Travis laugh until his stomach hurts. 

Their coworkers visit, checking in and bringing gifts. The hospital room is full of cut flowers, vases littering every surface until the nurses are placing them on the floor so they can work. Wes brightens a little with every offering; it won’t be enough, not until he can get back to his jungle of a garden in Alex’s backyard, but it helps.

Their coworkers don’t know how much it helps; they just know that Wes likes flowers, so that’s what they bring.

Alex visits, casting a knowing look Travis’s way, and when she leans down to kiss his cheek, for the first time the smell of her poisoned honey blood is familiar and comforting, not something he has to learn to ignore.

She gives Wes a potted plant, just big enough for him to wrap his hands around, and they both politely pretend not to notice when he sticks his thumbs in the soil and breathes a sigh of relief.

Paekman doesn’t visit. Travis isn’t sure he really expects him to. After all, Paekman is dead.

Except every so often, right as he’s about to drift off to sleep, he’ll feel a tingling on the back of his neck, and hear, ever so faintly, a whisper of laughter by his ear.

\---

Wes moves gingerly, but with purpose, striding through Alex’s house and out the back door without deviating an inch. Travis follows, purportedly to keep Wes company but mostly to catch Wes if he suddenly falls over.

Wes doesn’t fall. He kicks off his shoes as soon as he hits the grass and practically collapses into the greenery. Branches and vines reach up to caress him, cradle him, creating a living seat to buoy his injured body.

Travis makes do with the lawn chair.

“So you remember when you got shot and freaked out and made a giant hallucinatory forest?” he asks.

Wes glowers at him, and a fern leaf wraps around his calf like a lover. Travis politely tries not to notice. “That was like four days ago, Travis, yes I remember. And I wasn’t freaking out, it was a manifestation of my powers in a moment of vulnerability.”

“Yeah…that sounds like freaking out to me.” He quickly moves on before Wes can have one of the trees throw something at his head. “While I was in your woods, I saw…I mean, I thought I saw…it was probably just me imagining it, but…”

Wes frowns. “Spit it out, Trav.”

He takes a breath. “I saw a fox. I thought it was Paekman.”

“Paekman is dead, Travis. We were there.”

“I know. But there was definitely a fox. I wouldn’t have found you without the little critter.”

Wes’s frown turns a little less annoyed, a little more thoughtful. “I don’t remember anyone else being there. But then, it’s not an exact science, and animals tend to be tangentially considered part of the wood. I might not have noticed.”

“Plus, you were shot,” Travis points out helpfully.

“Yes, I was shot. That does tend to put a damper on things.”

They sit and think about this for a few minutes.

“Wes…” Travis says after a while. “Do you realize that your plants are like full-on molesting you right now?”

Those bright blue eyes roll in a perfect circle. “Oh my god, you fucking perv.”

“No, seriously, I think that branch is trying to unbutton your shirt. I’m just looking out for your virtue here.”

“I hate you,” Wes grumbles, sulking in his leafy chair that is starting to look like a pod that’s eating him or something. “So much. Get out of my garden.”

But a delicate creeper vine twines with Travis’s bootlaces, so he knows Wes is lying.

It’s another few minutes before Wes says, “It’d be a pretty good trick, making us think he’s dead.”

“And coming back would be just the kind of ‘gotcha’ prank he’d love to pull.” Travis leans back in the chair, hands on his stomach. “So maybe we’ll see him again. I’d like that.”

“Yeah.” Wes’s smile is soft, and hopeful. “Me too.”

It’s not long after that before Wes falls asleep, covered in a blanket of greenery that’s doing their best to heal their god. Travis tips the chair back, basking in the warm summer day. It’s not the heat of the savannah—it’s not quite hot enough, or dry enough, and there are too many trees and buildings.

But the old days are gone. Better to live in the here and now, and right here and right now, Travis has never felt more content. He’s with his pack, small as it is, and he has hope that he’ll see a dear, dear friend again.

“See you in the future, Paekman,” he murmurs, and right before he himself falls asleep, he thinks he hears the bright, mirthful yip of a fox.

**Author's Note:**

> I always love weirdly powerful immortal beings trying to act human for whatever reason. Add a few too many urban fantasy series with old gods walking around and a dash of Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods when inspiration struck and…here we are.


End file.
